


Happy New Year, Captain Mal

by cleverqueen



Series: Inspired Microfictions [1]
Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, New Year's Celebrations, Slice of Life, moon cakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 20:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4194522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleverqueen/pseuds/cleverqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A piece of New Year's fluff. Kaylee makes a moon cake from the drab protein paste. Simon isn't as impressed as he should be. Zoey and Mal reminisce about the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy New Year, Captain Mal

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by Bronwyn at Wayward Coffeehouse in Seattle, WA who gave me the prompt "Serenity Firefly-class transport ship, evening, orange."

In space, you can’t tell evening from... well, you know how it is that the saying goes. I ain’t gonna say all the next parts because this is a special occasion, and my engineer takes special occasions serious. Now tonight was the celebration for New Year’s, and Kaylee was being a mite particular about all the decorations in my boat on account of it being her first major holiday with her young man, _official-like_.

S’why she’d dressed up in a pretty blue-and-white checked dress like them folk wear on her planet. Her doctor weren’t paying her no mind, though, and she’d taken to twirling her hair in depressed circles while he watched his moon-addled sister dance in circles all around the table.

“Red moons, red moons,” River caroled. I supposed it were better than blue suns.

Preacher came in through the open door, “Gung hay fat choy.”

Wash grinned and tossed him the same two-bit coin he’d given everybody for the holiday so far. Everybody ’cept Jayne, seeing as how Jayne hadn’t shown up yet. “Happy new year to you too. Now, c’n you give that back? I only have the one.”

Book obligingly handed the piece over, and moved to stand beside Inara. “Good evening,” he said. Well, if the preacher wanted to spend all his time with the _Companion_ instead of being sociable with the rest of us, that was none of my never mind.

I braced myself for the sound.

“Good evening, Shepherd.” Yep. Her voice was as low and lyrical as ever. She’d dressed in red silk, the only one of us able to turn up in the color. Somehow, she made it seem like she was doing Kaylee’s decorating for her, instead of showing us all up.

The rest of _Serenity_ didn’t have no red anything. In fact, this year the New Year’s envelopes had to be orange. Except for Inara’s, of course. _She_ had specially made pouches in red silk for each and every one of us. I weren’t expecting to open mine any time soon.

“This is it!” Kaylee announced. Everyone moved out of her way, making a corridor between the kitchen and the table. Balanced carefully in her hands, she had a pale moon cake. It was round, looked to be a brown pastry, and had the symbol for _luck_ scratched into the top. “I made it myself!” Leastwise, I assumed it was a moon cake.

River whirled around her, dangerous close to the pretty bit of sweet. “It’s ugly,” she declared, then dashed to Simon’s side and tucked herself under his arm. Stuck her tongue out for good measure.

Inara gasped.

The doc’s mouth opened, and I could tell he was going to make the wrong choice of words, so I derailed him. No one upsets my little Kaylee. “You remember that one time?”

Everybody else thought I was crazy, looking bewildered at one another. But Zoe didn’t need no more prompting than I’d given her. “I surely do, sir,” she said. She patted her husband on the hand like she was telling him the story personal-like and the rest of the ship were just listening in. “It was during the war, baby. We had New Year’s back then too.”

“Never said you didn’t.” He leaned into her, anticipating. Zoe’s war stories were rarely positive. Usually they involved us cowering behind walls of dirt, dead bodies next to us that hadn’t got moved yet. Dead bodies with names and families and...

It had been New Year’s Day, and the bright bursting lights and ringing ears hadn’t been from fireworks.

Zoe kept going. “The Alliance soldiers tossed something into our trench. We ducked, a reflex to save our lives, but nothing happened. They were just moon cakes.”

Wash pressed even closer to her side, not in the slightest bit reassured. “I’ve heard this story before. There were apples.”

Kaylee bent her knees to get her arms lower while still at the same angle, till the cake hit the table’s lip. Then she pushed, careful, forward until it was dead center. Her eyes crinkled and cheeks bunched up with pride. That’s my girl.

Zoe nodded. “We weren’t getting caught out again, so I cut one with my knife. The center really _was_ salted egg yolk.” She pulled out the knife in question and offered it to Kaylee. Zoe would never let go of that knife for anyone other than family.

My engineer happily accepted. “Well, I didn’t manage to get egg yolk,” Kaylee demurred. “Or lotus paste.” Her shoulders slumped, but then she brightened resolutely. A girl like that could keep all the hearts on a ship running for years. “But the protein packs from the back of the cabinet have the consistency of red bean!”

I was mighty doubtful about that. Still, it weren’t going to stop me from choking down every bite she might plate.

Unfortunately, River agreed with my internal assessment. She knocked that cake clean off the table before Kaylee’s knife could even touch it. It splattered all over the floor, making a big damn mess that Simon’s little meimei wasn’t going to clean up. Funny how her crazy always came out to her advantage.

“River!” Simon rebuked her, but his disapproval would never be stronger than that.

I never got a piece of those Alliance cakes either, even if they did turn out to be just fine. I made sure the soldiers got their share of the best “grenades” we ever had, and that didn’t leave much after.

A clattering from the doorway pulled my attention to the last of our shipmates to arrive. “Out of my gorram way,” Jayne growled, and the box in his hands distracted even Kaylee from her dismay. The box had _CAKE_ etched in and painted black, and above and beneath there were delicate little curlicues. “I done spent days on this, and you’re all going to enjoy it.”

We quailed appropriately beneath his glare, every one.

The preacher took some credit. “My monastery supplied the dye when last we visited.”

Jayne grunted something vaguely positive, so it was probably true. With a huff, Jayne slid the front face off the box to reveal a perfectly red moon cake, red as Inara’s favorite lipstick. The top was sculpted in more curlicues and a cunning border of running rabbits. The center was taken up by a character so ornate I couldn’t rightly read it. Not that I’d tell him that.

Kaylee’s hands flew up to her face but didn’t touch, like she couldn’t decide whether to move them forward to back or anywhere.

Wash wasn’t so bashful. “Did you _make_ this, Jayne?”

Jayne scoffed. “Said so already.”

“It’s very impressive.” Trust a Companion to be all politic.

“My momma taught me,” Jayne said.

Of course she did. Happy New Year to us all, no matter what time it was or what kind of decorations we had. Jayne had made us a cake, and we were going to be lucky this year. I could feel it.

(’Course, I’d felt that way before.)               

**Author's Note:**

> So, about the Chinese language in this story. I went to high school in a majority Asian city in California, and this is the way we used to romanize "Happy New Year" on everything. My phrasing is probably all wrong for the Firefly-verse. (Is it the same dialect? The same style of romanizing?) However, the point of this story is fluffy anecdotal nostalgia, and "gung hay fat choy" does that for me.


End file.
